Welcome to the Forum. I have been using Dell Precision Workstation laptops for 6 years and like them very much. You can get some good prices on refurbs thru the Dell Small business outlet website. Boxx has a good track record but are on the expensive side. There are some available thru HP, Lenovo and Microstation also.

I would suggest checking the hardware recommendation portion on SWorks Customer Portal. You can enter the vendor/model and see if they meet the suggested minimum specs (graphic cards are important).

If you can afford it I would not try to slide by with the most inexpensive unit you can find. Going for a mid/high end will give you better chances of it meeting specs for several years.

We currently use ~6 DELL Precision M6600 mobile workstations that are about 2.5 years old and are very happy with them both as travel and desktop (with docking stations) workstations. Their configuration is:

Windows 7 Professional, 64 bit, SP1

Intel Core i7 2860-QM CPU@ 2.50GHz

16GB RAM

NVIDIA Quadro 5010M graphics card

Windows Experience Index numbers

Processor 7.6

RAM 7.8

Graphics 7.4

Gaming 7.4

Disk 5.9

SolidWorks 2011 Benchmark

Disk 78.7

CPU 107.1

Graphics 30.7

Total 216.5

OCUS Creo Elements Pro 5.0 Benchmark

Disk 215

CPU 1099

Graphics 1026

Total 2137

(Note, all results from regular user mode with all corporate progams and configurations etc.)

Recomendations for any laptop/computer for MCAD use;

Don't bother with more than 2 cores, MCAD programs really don't use more than 1

Get the fastest processor in GHz

Graphics must be NVIDIA

Usually I recommend 1 step down from top of the line

12+ GB RAM

Be aware that performance and stability are VERY dependent upon graphics driver version, latest is not always the best.

Some people claim the GT6XX series GeForce cards work fine for them, others, not so much. GeForce cards are not approved. Use at your own risk ... but remember the graphics in laptops cannot be changed.

I would take exception to Dan's comment "Graphics must be NVIDIA". First, because not all Nvidia cards work well with SolidWorks. The Quadro NVS cards are quite useless. The GeForce cards may work, but they might not. The Quadro cards, except the NVS, are usually OK. Second, because many people find that the FirePro cards work quite well.

I assume that Perth Wa means Perth, Western Australia, not Perth, Washington, since the latter town doesn't seem to exist.